Entertainment

Cast members Tracy Spiridakos and Billy Burke attend a panel for "Revolution" during the NBC television network portion of the Television Critics Association Summer press tour in Beverly Hills, California July 24, 2012. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

The big-buzz series Revolution finally makes its debut Monday, Sept. 17 on NBC and Citytv. This is the one where the lights go out.

The main part of the story deals with what is occurring 15 years after the permanent blackout. But surveying the dark landscape, this thought occurred to me: Hollywood sure doesn't think much of human nature, does it?

In every post-apocalyptic story Hollywood tells - and there are lots of them - the assumption is that everything will go to complete hell if normal human beings are left to their own devices, i.e., without a military or a police force.

A secondary assumption always is that without an organized military, ironically everyday people will turn completely militaristic.

Now, I remember how inconvenient the big blackout of 2003 was, so I'm not keen on testing my theories, Revolution-style.

However, it must be acknowledged that in addition to inventing a bunch of bad stuff, human beings have created a lot of good stuff, too. I don't know what the overall bad-to-good ratio is, but it definitely isn't 100% bad, 0% good.

This all is related to the plot of Revolution, which largely is seen through the struggles of Charlie Matheson (played by Canadian Tracy Spiridakos) and her brother Danny (Graham Rogers). As stated previously, it's a decade and a half after the lights went out, and the Matheson clan has banded together with a collection of others to form a makeshift community.

When the family is torn apart by evil militaristic forces, Charlie is tasked to reconnect with her estranged uncle Miles (Billy Burke), a former U.S. Marine living a mysteriously reclusive life. Together with a rogue band of survivors, Charlie and Miles set out to overthrow the militia while also tracking the mystery of why the power failed in the first place.

The people with the guns have the power in Revolution. But after a while in this environment, wouldn't the guns start breaking, and people wouldn't be able to fix them? Just wondering.

Revolution bills itself as "a swashbuckling journey of hope and rebirth." But the reason all the good people in Revolution need hope and rebirth is that everything has gone to complete hell.

If the lights really went out forever, how would we respond? Would we instantly react like Kent Brockman, newscaster on The Simpsons, who mused in the face of a crisis, "Without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?"

Or, in most cases and obviously with errors and miscalculations along the way, would human beings find a way to kind of make it work? I guess it depends on whether your Revolution comes in a glass that's half full or half empty.